Glad to see they finally did this. I was talking about it over a year ago now and people would not believe it was going to happen, they all said that Tesla was it for advanced batteries with Panasonic and that it would always be that way, I guess not.

This may be an indication that Toyota is finally waking up. That's good--their hybrid tech has actually remained fairly stagnant for a long time, and they've been kind of famously against full electric cars. Competition is good, so hopefully this signals some up-and-coming full EVs that will be widely available.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

That's a good thing.

Edit: To clarify my statement, this is a good thing because, even if you don't believe high-pressure vessels required to store and consume hydrogen are dangerous (and there are solid arguments to support that they are not), building the infrastructure to SUPPORT hydrogen cars would be expensive and more invasive than upgrading the existing electrical grid to support EVs. EV fueling is also far simpler, as most people charge at home.

Does the shape of the cells allow for them to be more dense (without the gaps you get from putting cylinders next to each other), or do they have to be spaced anyways for thermal reasons giving rough the same energy density..?

Does the shape of the cells allow for them to be more dense (without the gaps you get from putting cylinders next to each other), or do they have to be spaced anyways for thermal reasons giving rough the same energy density..?

It depends entirely on the engineering of the specific battery pack; Some battery packs use the channels between the circular cells to circulate coolant (or just move air through). Sometimes it's used for wiring. Sometimes it's wasted space. Being able to develop and commercially use cells of different form factors opens up more options. It may not have a direct benefit to absolute energy density, but may result in improvements in battery charge life, discharge performance, and so on.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This may be an indication that Toyota is finally waking up. That's good--their hybrid tech has actually remained fairly stagnant for a long time, and they've been kind of famously against full electric cars. Competition is good, so hopefully this signals some up-and-coming full EVs that will be widely available.

What it likely means is that Toyota believes that the economics for BEV's in the next design cycle will become good enough to offer BEV versions of their current offerings.

I don't think Toyota was asleep as much as they likely felt that the compromises were too significant. They're pretty much have the technology 100% down for BEV's between their hydrogen and hybrid vehicles. What this does is secure them the battery packs they'll need.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

Hydrogen as an energy storage medium is stupid, and that's assuming you can produce the hydrogen for free. Storage, compression and transport are extremely costly and risky when compared to electricity.

It was a dumb idea 40 years ago, and it's a dumb idea now. Physics agrees with this assessment.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

Huh?

Hydrogen is a gigantic pain to transport and store. We know how to do both with electricity.

Hydrogen isn't a green fuel, it's currently made by transforming methane. We can make electricity from a variety of green sources.

Creating hydrogen causes a more significant loss of energy than just using the electricity directly.

We have infrastructure in place today for electricity. Not so much for hydrogen.

By pretty much every measure, hydrogen is a worse fuel than just straight up electricity.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

We have infrastructure, their called "petrol stations", they just need a new pump. Don't fool yourself in to believing we have the infrastructure for everyone switching to BEV's though, while everyone has "power", no country I'm aware of have the power grid to support everyone switching to BEV's. As for green source, every green source of electricity is a green source for hydrogen. My suggestion is to go for nuclear powerplants making hydrogen on site, when we get to where we need proper amounts.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

I think in the long term you'll see Hydrogen vehicles take up the slack in places that BEV's are not practical in. It just won't be 99.9% of the fleet. They also have the advantage of being able to run off of the same basic electric drive trains that BEV vehicles use.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

Hydrogen as an energy storage medium is stupid, and that's assuming you can produce the hydrogen for free. Storage, compression and transport are extremely costly and risky when compared to electricity.

It was a dumb idea 40 years ago, and it's a dumb idea now. Physics agrees with this assessment.

Physics also agree that batteries are heavy, take a long time to charge and that a larger power grid is necessary to support BEV's. None of which is a problem with hydrogen.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

We have infrastructure, their called "petrol stations", they just need a new pump. Don't fool yourself in to believing we have the infrastructure for everyone switching to BEV's though, while everyone has "power", no country I'm aware of have the power grid to support everyone switching to BEV's. As for green source, every green source of electricity is a green source for hydrogen. My suggestion is to go for nuclear powerplants making hydrogen on site, when we get to where we need proper amounts.

"they just need a new pump"

Sure. Pumps that can move gas under high pressure into a vehicle safely, that can be operated by your average idiot.

And new high strength tanks made of materials that can safely contain hydrogen.

And a whole new fleet of trucks with high strength tanks made of materials that can safely contain hydrogen to deliver the hydrogen to the stations.

And all the production facilities to generate the hydrogen in the first place assuming you aren't cracking methane to get it.

It makes zero sense. I don't know where you get your information, but is seems like it might be the science fiction section of your local Barnes and Nobel.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

I think in the long term you'll see Hydrogen vehicles take up the slack in places that BEV's are not practical in. It just won't be 99.9% of the fleet. They also have the advantage of being able to run off of the same basic electric drive trains that BEV vehicles use.

I think it much more likely that we'll see those vehicles use the same fuel as aircraft - synthetically produced kerosene. No new storage tech needed, no new vehicles needed.

This may be an indication that Toyota is finally waking up. That's good--their hybrid tech has actually remained fairly stagnant for a long time, and they've been kind of famously against full electric cars. Competition is good, so hopefully this signals some up-and-coming full EVs that will be widely available.

What it likely means is that Toyota believes that the economics for BEV's in the next design cycle will become good enough to offer BEV versions of their current offerings.

I don't think Toyota was asleep as much as they likely felt that the compromises were too significant. They're pretty much have the technology 100% down for BEV's between their hydrogen and hybrid vehicles. What this does is secure them the battery packs they'll need.

I think Toyota was squeezing as much as they could out of their existing battery infrastructure. It's the reason they still use NiMH batteries in many of their new hybrids. I think that they finally decided that the risk of falling further behind was too great to wait any longer. To me, it seems like they've been dragged mercilessly into the EV world by competition, which is what competition is for. :-)

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

We have infrastructure, their called "petrol stations", they just need a new pump. Don't fool yourself in to believing we have the infrastructure for everyone switching to BEV's though, while everyone has "power", no country I'm aware of have the power grid to support everyone switching to BEV's. As for green source, every green source of electricity is a green source for hydrogen. My suggestion is to go for nuclear powerplants making hydrogen on site, when we get to where we need proper amounts.

"they just need a new pump"

Sure. Pumps that can move gas under high pressure into a vehicle safely, that can be operated by your average idiot.

And new high strength tanks made of materials that can safely contain hydrogen.

And a whole new fleet of trucks with high strength tanks made of materials that can safely contain hydrogen to deliver the hydrogen to the stations.

And all the production facilities to generate the hydrogen in the first place assuming you aren't cracking methane to get it.

It makes zero sense. I don't know where you get your information, but is seems like it might be the science fiction section of your local Barnes and Nobel.

Yes, those are the engineering challenges to this. These are difficult and expensive, but so are getting batteries lighter, faster to charge, and supersizing the power grid. As for your belittling comment, you do you, I'd rather not...

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

We have infrastructure, their called "petrol stations", they just need a new pump. Don't fool yourself in to believing we have the infrastructure for everyone switching to BEV's though, while everyone has "power", no country I'm aware of have the power grid to support everyone switching to BEV's. As for green source, every green source of electricity is a green source for hydrogen. My suggestion is to go for nuclear powerplants making hydrogen on site, when we get to where we need proper amounts.

The pump is the easy part. The entire supply, storage and delivery infrastructure is the hard part. For EV, that infrastructure is mostly in place, only needing extension to charging stations which is already being done with minimal effort.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

I don't see any way that this could be true. You have to build more things to support hydrogen. You still have to have batteries and electric motors in all the cars, AND you have to build Hydrogen fueling stations. You also have to physically transport the hydrogen in trucks/trains.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

I think in the long term you'll see Hydrogen vehicles take up the slack in places that BEV's are not practical in. It just won't be 99.9% of the fleet. They also have the advantage of being able to run off of the same basic electric drive trains that BEV vehicles use.

I think it much more likely that we'll see those vehicles use the same fuel as aircraft - synthetically produced kerosene. No new storage tech needed, no new vehicles needed.

Synthetically produced kerosene is made, mostly, from coal (in WW2 the Germans produced the vast amount of their fuel this way.)It is a terribly dirty way to make a liquid fuel, and costs much more in energy input than the energy produced.

Toyota takes another step towards batteries and away from the hydrogen they'd so planned to push.

It's such a shame to see, the Hydrogen cars has so much more potential than the battery cars, both in infrastructure, ease of use, and performance. I'm worried that the rather extreme incentives given to battery cars gives us the worse car in the long term...

This is nonsense. It's incredibly hard to store hydrogen safely, and there's zero infrastructure for it. On top of that, there's no cheap green way to generate hydrogen. Everyone has power in their house, and it can pull from more renewable sources as the generating capacity changes over. Hydrogen was never going to be a thing.

All of this is incorrect and way out of date. High pressure storage for hydrogen in vehicles is well proven at this point with an established standard of 700-bar COPV tanks. There are 3 car models on sale in California with the latest having 380 miles range from it's tanks. There are no obstacles to storing and moving sufficient hydrogen for a fueling infrastructure just using such tanks or using liquid hydrogen.

With respect to infrastructure there are currently 44 hydrogen refueling stations in California, with plans for 200 stations by about 2023. Today you can quite easily drive a fuel-cell car in the Bay Area or LA. California has about half the world fleet of cars though Germany and Japan both have substantially more fueling stations.

Lastly, if you haven't been paying attention the cost of renewable energy and electrolysers has been dropping through the floor over the last 10 years. It is absolutely feasible to produce completely green hydrogen and compete with fossil gas in the transport market. Projects using wind energy have been announced in Europe in the last year and you will see projects launch in California this year. There is little doubt in the industry that the transportation supply will be completely green.